October 4, 2010

“I’m ready to kill some cops” is probably the last thing anybody would ever think about calling 911 and telling an emergency operator when they pick up. One Inwood man did, and the resulting standoff ended up with him dead as of yesterday morning. A protest is being planned.

Twenty-four-year-old Emmanuel Paulin called up 911 and had the following conversation with them:

911 Operator: “911 Operator, where is your emergency?”

Suspect: “Yeah, I want you to call the cops ’cause I’m ready to kill.”

911 Operator: “What?”

Suspect: “I’m ready to kill some cops right now.”

911 Operator: “You’re ready to kill some cops? Where are you?”

Suspect: “Yeah [lists address], New York, I’m right here, outside.”

Operator: “OK, so what’s going on there?”

Suspect: “Yeah, I’m ready to kill cops right now.”

Operator: “Oh, OK.”

Suspect: “OK, yeah, get em, I’m [Inaudible], I’ll be right here.“

Note that final “Oh, OK,” of the 911 operator, because what the hell else do you say at the point? Surely, maybe somewhere in the 911 operator’s manual there’s some kind of direction as to how to handle callers like this — attempting to get them not to, for example — but it doesn’t seem like that was the route taken, for whatever reason, though what would you have said? Come to think of it, is there a page in the 911 operator’s manual for What You Do When Someone Calls Telling You They Want to Kill Cops? Likely not. Regardless, cops showed up on the scene, tried to Taser the knife-wielding Paulin, and after Paulin pulled the tasers out of his own body and kept approaching police, was shot dead by police. Some are calling this an overreaction. Via CBS New York:

Fernando Mateo, the president of Hispanics Across America, held a vigil Sunday night in front of Paulino’s home. “We believe that with all the technology and all the training the finest police department in the world has, it could have been prevented, it could have been handled differently,” Mateo said.

The entire incident seems bizarre. A 911 operator gets a call with a hostile suspect officers should be prepared to handle, the suspect has a knife, the officers have guns, the suspect gets shot after one attempt with a Taser him doesn’t work. Maybe an over-reliance on Tasers without training towards what to do if the first Tasing failed might have helped, but then again, none of us have ever had to deal with a guy who called 911 threatening to kill cops come after us — while we’re dressed in cop uniforms — with a knife. So there’s that.